This sculpture was made directly on request by a collector who saw my performance at Poppositions art fair in Brussels in 2015. I can only assume that he was moved by my use of converse shoes in another piece, to bring me two pairs of those very trainers, but the story he told me put them in a very different realm, in my opinion. He gave me a pair of his own old converse as well as a pair from his ex-boyfriend, and just as it happened, they were both the same size. Since it was from an ex, and they had been abandoned, I wanted to take that into my remake, and expand the story with the sculpture.

Instead of cutting away the soles and stitching them together as I had with my previous piece, instead I made sure the bond that held them together was not permanent, but rather I made it optional. I attached a zipper along the edges of the soles, so that the two right shoes from both the men as well as the left shoes could be zipped together. This would involve an act of choice, to get close enough and then pull the zipper closed. But I also wanted to emphasize, that by getting close, especially to an ex, there is also another kind of pull that can happen, a much more spontaneous one, not caused by will but simply there. For this I attached a number of super strong neodym magnets to the soles of the shoes. They are strong enough to clamp the shoes together should they be brought close enough to each other, but not so strong that they can’t be pulled free again. For a stronger bond an act of will is required, and the zippers need to be pulled shut.

I picked this bag up somewhere, for practical reasons I think, but I can’t really remember. I guess I kept it because I find it cute, even if I was never myself a young anarchist when I was a teenager. The act of scribbling left-activist messages on an army bag is in itself a beautiful act of resistance, I think, but it also hints at the desire for active and forceful change. Such as the army is good at implementing. Especially the statement “Fuck the Norm!” speaks volumes. Is this not just the expression of another norm, of politics as a fashion within a specific subculture? If someone writes “W Bush is a c..t!” on their jacket, I suspect a real and personal dislike for that particular person, which I can believe in. “Fuck society!” on the other hand, sounds a bit lame to me. What society, or at least what part of it is it that you so dislike? I can’t respect generic and general statements in activism any more than I can in art, I guess. But it’s still cute.

But what is a call to “Fuck the Norm!” other than a desire for war with society, for revolution? And what is revolution other than the destruction of the values and dignitaries of the past? To explore this tendency is angry, young expressions, I wanted to focus in a bit more on the effects of revolution. And for achieving that, who could be better than Louis XVI? I made a passable copy of his death mask (and yes, it does seem he had a huge nose) recreated from all those images I could scourge from the web of course, and then impressed this on the bag, with the help of a resin cast. I then painted in the new shape into the fabric of the bag, and there, I had the cause and effect of revolution efficiently captured in just one fashion garment. The bag still opens and could thus be used, even with its new hard-back, but it also hangs nicely as a sculpture. I hope that apart from being a cultural statement of contemporary art and taste, it also helps remind those who now see it, that when the revolution comes, not even those highest up are safe.

As an artist you inevitably collect a large amount of art books, or at least I do. You think they will be of great use to you later on, but the truth is, since you have to work so much, you have very little time for browsing through books. Instead, they all remain forgotten and stacked away in your shelves, collecting dust. The most of them you ever see is their spines, which is a shame really, since the images inside are usually much nicer. For my collectors edition, I wanted to convert one of them into something more enjoyable, into an artwork where you would at least see two of all the great images in the book.

I also wanted to play around with the notion of actually looking at the images, so I gave the object its own eyes, with which it is always and constantly perusing itself.

The labyrinth I cut through the pages is sort of impossible to clear with both eye balls at the same time. The book is now a marble game, and as such it is both enjoyable and displays well on the wall. All the images apart from the two ones I picked for the front, are of course for ever hidden away now, and sealed behind bolted down perspex, but the two Michelangelo’s are seen much more often than if the book had just remained in its shelf.

What does an artist have to do with all those art history books, to be able to soak up the inspiration and knowledge contained in them? Maybe a magical/surreal approach is much more realistic than to say that, yes, I just need to take more time reading. Maybe browsing is really the answer, but if so, do you also have to own the books, or should you just pester the art book shops with your lounging around and perpetual browsing without buying? I don’t have the answer, but I hop my straight forward approach is at least enjoyable.

I bought the cheapest possible mobile phone I could find at ASDA, for my six week stay at the ESW in Edinburgh where I did the second edition of The Temporary Art Repair Shop in 2012. It was cheap enough, but of course it turned out I couldn’t use it as a backup again for my next project abroad, because of some stupid block that forced me to buy yet another discardable phone. Still, I didn’t want to just throw it away. This brand new and very cheap mobile phone reminded me of the so called “burners” that criminals use and then immediately throw away after use, so that they cannot be tapped. A shame however, to only be safe from wire-tapping by actually throwing electronics away, and thus contribute to the growing amount of electronics waste accumulating in our society anyway. Could I maybe find a solution for how a dealer could hold onto his cheap phone and still not get traced?

I set about constructing a well sealed case for my old, almost unused phone, out of wood and with hinges and magnetic lock. To keep the tracing rays of supernational security agencies as well as supernatural beings away, I dressed the outside with roofing lead. A note for the user, I of course then oiled the lead so as not to transmit toxic lead to their hands.

I dedicate this absurd but maybe even functional attempt at privacy to the National Security Agency, wondering if this blog post will now pop up on their screens because I mentioned them? Who knows? I also particularly enjoy creating a hand-made solution to an electronic and virtual problem.

The basic concept is from an earlier original object from my workshop, but I made the design much cleaner and sleeker. Hopefully, this version fits better within the family of “desirable design objects” than my original more wooden version, even though the suggested message is still timeless.

The material is clear, acrylic glass that has been fused together with solvent, still encapsulating discarded old-style light bulbs just like in the original version. I made an edition of 5.

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